Halo CE is a console arena shooter that drew heavy inspiration from Quake 3. While Halo is much slower in pacing, the ideality of certain arena principles doesn't change, one of those being how item respawns are handled. As you know, HPC uses the Quake 3 system in which an item's countdown begins once when an item is taken, while Xbox CE works in such a way that all items constantly respawn at predetermined intervals regardless of when they're picked up. In HPC, as in Quake, each item presents the player with a uniquely timed challenge to maintain control by way of "setting" the time. In high level Quake play the importance of this is obvious - player's move around maps in precisely timed and navigated circuits to collect the items they control while simultaneously trying to take their opponent's items. This challenge is absent with static timers because items respawn concurrently. The Quake/HPC system presents you a choice - to grab an item now, or to wait, for the sake of confusing the enemy or to better design your own circuit around the sandbox. This makes for a more competitive arena shooter because it allows for tactical decisions.
It is simply not the case that a game is more competitive because of "equal footing," in fact that idea is ridiculous in an arena shooter because the goal is to be at an advantage over one's opponents with the use of special powerups and weapons as often as possible. You claim that Xbox CE's deterministic spawn system "forced out campers," but the truth in that is dependent on assumptions. Countless times in games of Xbox CE a team arrived at the location of an item and chose to wait for a respawn any length of time away because there's no incentive to be elsewhere picking up another item. In such a situation there most certainly is an undeniable incentive to camp, relative to the Quake system, in which there would be an element of uncertainty unless a team was controlling the item. It's important to understand that this problem is only compounded by the close proximity of camo and rockets in the CSP preset, too. This proximity dumbs down strategy even further because there's no point in taking one item and not the other, the choice is made - you're to grab both because there's no direct advantage in leaving one for later and potentially gaining an advantage in doing so. Remaining sedentary with a timer is so simple and effective in Xbox CE that item possession actually becomes the primary strategy.
It's a shame the Xbox CE community is the vocal majority because they only know the competition inhibiting crap like rockets and static timers built into what they played.
) themself? Sure. Maybe. I don't know (and mostly don't care); but wishing people to lose their jobs it's really something awful.
